The real when closely observed becomes magical.

The Falls family didn’t put the ‘thanks’ in Thanksgiving

by Malcolm R. Campbell on November 24, 2016

Every year, like an annual checkup with a proctologist, the dwindling Falls family made a pilgrimage to its ancestral home, Fallaway, illegally located on a remote limestone rock outcropping at Pedernales Falls State Park in the Texas hill country. Constructed by chain gang labor out of haunted stone stolen from Enchanted Rock, the old mansion–where Manderley’s Mrs. Danvers first worked as a maid–was built by Falls patriarch Ash for his Bride Snow from an ample fortune funded by a misbegotten conglomerate of saloons, houses of sin, and corner-cutting mortuaries. Granny Falls, daughter of Snow, presides over the gloomy mansion where, even in the innocent sunshine of high noon, the plaintive cries of ghosts and badly evolved creatures inhabiting Deadfalls Cemetery in the kitchen garden are louder and more persistent than the voice of water at Pedernales Falls.

This year, like every other year, Trick, his sister Niagara, and his brother Pratt made the long trek from the four corners of the known world to grandmother’s house.

After the graceless chorus of amens that followed Granny’s prayer (God is Great, God is Good; Let us thank Him for our food. By His hands we all are fed, Save us Lord from our dishonored dead.), the family opened its tired eyes to behold a meal fit primarily for the garbage disposal: twice boiled turkey, cranberry slush, mashed potatoes with deadeye gravy, stuffing knocked out of goodness knows what, wilted greens with squid ink dressing, and Parker House rolls.

Pratt: Every year as we thank the good Lord for the blessings we escaped, I wonder what we have done to deserve this.

Niagara: Our lives would make a chart-topping blues song if anyone in the family knew how to sing.

Trick: You’ve outdone yourself, Granny.

Granny: Last thing I wanted to do was repeat the horrors of last year’s meal, so I made fresh ones.

Pratt: So who’s gotten knocked up since last Thanksgiving?

Niagara: Oh, Pratt, be nice.

Pedernales Falls

Trick: I think I’m pregnant.

Granny: Holy shit.

Trick: Sorry, as an empath, I often blurt out what somebody else is thinking.

Granny: Why’s everyone looking at me? I haven’t been arse over tits since the big M a thousand years ago.

Niagara: Well, this is almost as awkward as last year’s green apple quick step epidemic.

Pratt: I’ll always blame the store bought fried pies for that.

Hooker: I’ll confess, I’m the one with the bun in the oven.

Granny: Who are you with, honey?

Pratt: She’s with me.

Niagara: That figures.

Belle: Pratt took me out of the business to make an honest woman of me.

Belle’s daddy at work

Granny: He hasn’t succeed yet, that’s clear to me. Are you one of Charon’s daughters over at Johnson City.

Belle: Yes, m’am, I’m one of hell’s belles.

Niagara: Are y’all married yet?

Belle: Pratt’s afraid to ask because when he goes into politics, he can’t have no fallen woman in a closet, worse yet a father in law who purportedly carries folks to the underworld.

Granny: Our family built the underworld before Al Capone was a bun in the oven.

Pratt: She’s talking about Satan’s world.

Granny: Satan’s never getting my into handbasket, I’ll tell you what.

Belle: You’re too much of a gentlemen to ask, Pratt honey, but you’re definitely the father. You remember that time we got lost in that dark wood and said “what the hell?” That’s when it happened.

Pratt: That was you?

Trick: Does anyone else need their moonshine on the rocks topped off?

Niagara: There’s not enough in that Mason jar to make it through the night.

Pratt: Belle, will you marry me?

Granny: What the hell?

Belle: Yes my handsome sweetums darling, I will marry you. Shall we set a date.

Niagara: How about right after desert?

Granny’s church as shown in ad in the back of the comic book.

Trick: Granny is an ordained minister from the Church of What’s Happening Now.

Granny: My diploma was right there on the wall before it fell behind the buffet during the hash slinging fight on Thanksgiving of ought six.

Niagara: That doesn’t nullify Granny’s powers, does it Trick.

Trick: Absolutely not.

Pratt: Well then, Niagara, pass the desert.

Granny: If you ask me, Pratt, you’ve have your just deserts coming for many years of many dark woods.

Pratt: I was rather hoping you’d start your pitch with “dearly beloved.”

Belle: Oh, Pratt, you’re gonna make me cry.

Pratt: Been there, done that.

Niagara: Granny, you got any more jars of this shine?

Narrator of this story guarding granny’s stoop.

Granny: Out on the stoop.

Trick: Pratt, when your sister comes back, I think it’s only fitting to ask her to be maid of honor.

Pratt: Spinster maid of honor’s more like it. Okay, okay, don’t look at me like that. I’ll ask her if you’ll agree to be best man.

Trick: Might as well, can’t dance, fields are to wet to plough.

Niagara: Was ya’ll talking about me while I fought through all the spider webs out back to get to the booze?

Granny: Drink up, you’re the maid of honor. Pratt, y’all will have to get married in the kitchen since it’s the only room that presentable.

Pratt: I thought you’d make us stand by the hitching post out front.

Granny: Not with all that thunder and lightning out there.

Belle: Oh, don’t worry about none of that. Daddy’s just having a bit of fun.

Niagara: Pass the devil’s food cake so we can get this show on the road and return to our lives.

Trick: Belle and Pratt, you’re starting off on a grand adventure. How fitting it is that it begins on Thanksgiving. I wish you much happiness, but always remember that no matter what weird stuff happens, you can kiss, make up, and say, “We’ll always have Pedernales.”

Granny: I never thought I’d live long enough to hear anybody say that.

Pratt: We usually say it when we’re drunk.

Narrator: And so the deed was done. . .

Niagara: I didn’t know we had a narrator.

Granny: Just one of the haints from underneath the rosemary.

Narrator: As I was saying, an so the deed was done, Belle and Pratt were married with a minimum of discouraging words next to Granny Falls cook stove that–according to all involved–wasn’t nearly as hot as Belle in her Victoria’s Secret wedding down, and finally just after the flour canister tipped over in front of the oscillating fan, creating a virtual whiteout, Granny pronounced the two love birds husband and wife which led Mr. and Mrs. Pratt falls to kiss so enthusiastically, everyone else felt moved to leave the room and sip apple pie moonshine on the front porch where the rain came down like there would be no tomorrow.

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